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Gun trafficking from Maine to other states is often cited by Question 3 backers as a chief reason to require background checks prior to all private gun sales. Yet advocates on both sides of Question 3 acknowledge that tackling gun trafficking – which is intimately linked with drug trafficking – will require enforcing existing federal laws as well as better educating Maine gun sellers.

National gun control groups and gun owners’ rights organizations will be watching closely Nov. 8 as voters in Maine cast ballots on a measure that supporters insist will close a dangerous loophole that allows convicted felons and the mentally ill to buy firearms in Maine’s thriving private gun marketplace. Those supporters contend Maine’s lack of background checks on private sales helps fuel the trafficking problem. A similar proposal is on the ballot in Nevada.

Opponents dismiss the proposals as feel-good measures that will only affect law-abiding gun owners and do nothing to stop individuals already intent on breaking the law.

“It’s another example of asking to put more laws on the books without arresting or prosecuting for laws already on the books,” said Lars Dalseide, spokesman for the National Rifle Association, which is heavily involved in the Question 3 campaign.

FUELING THE ‘IRON PIPELINE’

While Maine has among the lowest crime rates in the nation, police and civic leaders in Massachusetts say the state’s weaker firearms laws help feed gun violence on the streets of Boston and other cities.

The most recent federal data show that Maine continues to be a top source for guns recovered by police in Massachusetts, a state with among the strictest gun control laws.

Between 2010 and 2015, police in Massachusetts recovered, seized or found 539 guns that were originally purchased in Maine. Massachusetts is one of a handful of states – along with New York and New Jersey – where roughly one-third or less of the guns recovered by police were originally sold in that state, an analysis of federal data from 2008 to 2015 shows. Advocates attribute that fact to Massachusetts’ stringent permitting system for handgun owners, which requires passage of a background check.

In Maine, by comparison, roughly 75 percent of recovered guns since 2008 were traced back to a sale in Maine.

Guns from Maine consistently account for between 8 and 9 percent of the firearms recovered by Massachusetts police for the past decade, according to data from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, or ATF. That places Maine second behind New Hampshire as the top source states for “crime guns” in Massachusetts other than those purchased in-state.

“Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, their gun laws are very lax so it is easy to acquire firearms versus in states like Massachusetts or Connecticut,” said Special Agent Christopher Arone with the ATF’s Boston Field Division. That makes states like Maine into source states for the thriving underground market in places such as Massachusetts.

“That seems to go hand-in-hand with the drug trade,” Arone said.

Law enforcement officials say the growing heroin crisis in Maine and throughout northern New England could be helping fuel this so-called “Iron Pipeline” of guns flowing south in exchange for drugs flowing north.

In one recent case, members of a New Haven, Connecticut, street gang were charged with using “straw purchasers” – which is already a federal crime – to buy guns from pawnshops in the Bangor area. The gang members then exchanged the guns for cash or drugs, including heroin, while the firearms were distributed to members of the Red Side Guerilla Brims gang in New Haven. Several gang members were later charged with murder for killings in Connecticut.

Portland Police Chief Michael Sauschuck said “there is no question that is happening” when asked about the guns-for-drugs trade. By expanding background checks to private sales, Sauschuck said, Maine could at least make it harder for guns to enter the iron pipeline.

“The simple fact is that about 5,500 people have been turned away from the gun counter (after a background check) since the law went into effect in 1998,” Sauschuck said, referring to the federal Brady Act law, which required background checks for all firearms sold by licensed dealers. “So people are trying to purchase firearms even though they are prohibited, … and we know there are prohibited persons who are falling through these loopholes because they are not required to get a background check” on private sales.

LAWS ARE ALREADY BEING BROKEN

The Sportsman’s Alliance of Maine’s David Trahan, who is helping lead the campaign against Question 3, doesn’t dispute that gun trafficking – especially in exchange for drugs – is an issue. He doubts, however, that expanding background checks will address the problem in a meaningful way.

“If you have a criminal, gun-running organization, they’re not going to go through a background check,” Trahan said. “They’re going to get their guns another way.”

Selling guns across state lines is already illegal in most circumstances under the federal Gun Control Act of 1968 unless the sale is handled by a licensed gun dealer, who is required to conduct background checks. So any Mainer knowingly selling guns to residents of Massachusetts or other states is already breaking the law unless the sale is conducted through a federally licensed dealer.

“Straw purchases” of firearms – in which someone buys a gun from a licensed dealer on behalf of someone else – is also a federal crime. Instead, Trahan said the federal government needs to send a message by aggressively prosecuting convicted felons and other “prohibited persons” who lie on their background check form.

Trahan also acknowledged that his organization and others have a role to play in educating gun owners about the law and encouraging gun sellers to run a background check if they do not know the buyer.

“There is an educational component where 10 percent of the (gun-owning) population or maybe just 5 percent doesn’t know you can’t sell a firearm to an out-of-state buyer,” Trahan said. “We understand that there needs to be some education done here to make sure people know the law.”

That was the case – or the claim, at least – of an Acton man who sold an estimated 100 handguns to a convicted felon from Massachusetts over several months in 2009 and 2010. Police in Lynn, Massachusetts, later recovered some of those guns in arrests. The seller, Randy Goodwin, was sentenced to three months in jail after claiming he was ignorant of the prohibition against selling a firearm to a resident of another state.

Question 3 has also divided Maine’s law enforcement community. While the Maine Chiefs of Police Association endorsed the expanded background checks, most of the state’s elected sheriffs oppose the measure.

Leaders in states across the country with stricter gun laws have complained for years about guns flowing across their borders via a black market facilitated by states with weaker purchasing requirements. Arone estimated that 90 percent of the ATF’s workload is spent on the “firearms” portion of the bureau’s name.

An October 2016 analysis conducted by the New York Attorney General’s Office found that between 2010 and 2015, 74 percent of “crime guns” recovered by police were traced back to sales in other states, including 86 percent of handguns. The study concluded that one in every five of those guns showed signs of “recent trafficking.”

Guns flowing along New York’s “Iron Pipeline” primarily come from Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. But Maine accounted for 262 of those recovered guns during the six-year period.

“It shows that New York’s laws requiring universal background checks and permits for handguns are working to keep criminals from purchasing these weapons within the state,” the New York Attorney General’s Office said. “But with ready access to guns in states without requirements for handgun licenses or background checks on private sales, gun traffickers easily purchase and import guns into New York. As a result, more than one in two recoveries is an out-of-state handgun.”

In 2015, 277 guns recovered in other states were traced back to Maine compared to 254 firearms in 2014, according to ATF statistics. Massachusetts was the largest recipient state by far, with 94 and 85 firearms traced to the Pine Tree State in those two years, respectively.

It’s occasionally a point of friction between leaders in Massachusetts and Maine as well as between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, whose gun laws largely mirror Maine’s.

For several years in the mid-2000s, the organization Stop Handgun Violence erected a billboard along Interstate 95 in Boston criticizing Maine, New Hampshire and several other states for not requiring background checks on private gun sales.

And this year the mayor of one Massachusetts city raised the issue in a strongly worded response to Maine Gov. Paul LePage’s racially charged comments about drug traffickers bringing heroin to Maine. Lawrence Mayor Daniel Rivera, whose community had been singled out by LePage, called for cooperation on the opiate and gun crises, not divisiveness.

“His comments help no one,” Rivera said. “You don’t hear us bemoaning the flood of guns bought in Maine with its weak gun laws. No, we discuss how we can fix our gun problem together. We don’t blame anyone. We find a solution.”

Sauschuck, the Portland police chief, said the gun-for-drugs trade is creating problems on both ends.

“From my end, it’s obvious that we have an issue with the state of Maine,” Sauschuck said. “But our dope is coming from down south.”

MARATHON BOMBING CONNECTION

While supporters and opponents can debate the merits of Question 3, there is no disputing that guns purchased in Maine occasionally turn up at crime scenes in Massachusetts or other states.

In fact, a 9 mm semiautomatic from Maine played a tragic role in the Boston Marathon bombings. During the post-bombing manhunt, the Tsarnaev brothers used a Ruger pistol to kill a 27-year-old police officer for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

That gun and several others were purchased legally at Cabela’s in Scarborough in November 2011. But within the year, the buyer had passed the gun – illegally, it would seem – along to another man who police said was involved in the Portland drug trade. It then changed hands several more times among acquaintances in Maine and Massachusetts – with its serial number filed off along the way – before Dzhokhar Tsarnaev borrowed the gun from a friend.

Either Dzhokhar or Tamerlan Tsarnaev used the P95 Ruger to shoot MIT Officer Sean Collier in April 2013 and then again to carjack a motorist. Finally, Tamerlan Tsarnaev fired the gun at officers – and then threw the empty pistol at them – prior to being shot and then run over by his fleeing brother.

To be fair, it is unlikely the background checks proposed under Question 3 would have stopped the Ruger from being passed among people already involved in low-level crimes. But the fact that less than a year and a half elapsed between the gun’s initial purchase in Scarborough and the Boston Marathon bombing illustrates how quickly firearms can move among criminal networks in Maine and Massachusetts.

In a more recent case, members of the Red Side Guerilla Brims gang out of New Haven were shown to have purchased at least 20 guns in the Bangor area as part of the guns-for-drugs trade. But again, those purchases involved “straw purchasers” who were legal to purchase guns but broke federal laws by buying them for others.

Dalseide with the NRA, which has already spent several hundred thousand dollars opposing Question 3 in Maine, argues that enforcing existing laws against straw purchasing is a better way to address the gun trafficking issue. He pointed to 50 federal laws dealing with firearms.

“If somebody comes into Maine to buy a gun to shop out of state for nefarious purposes, that is already against the law, so this new law doesn’t address that,” Dalseide said.

But David Farmer, spokesman for Mainers for Responsible Gun Ownership, said it is not an either/or scenario when it comes to addressing gun trafficking. In addition to enforcing laws prohibiting straw purchases, Maine must close the loophole that allows private individuals to sell guns with almost no questions asked.

“Straw purchasing is part of the issue but, right now, if you go to ArmsList.com or to Uncle Henry’s, there is no requirement that they ask any questions at all” of potential buyers, Farmer said. By adding a background check on unlicensed sales, he said, you are going to ask those questions.

“A background check solves that question of having someone document if they are from in-state or out-of-state,” Farmer said. “But without a background check, you have to take somebody at their word.”

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Opinions without evidence. Got to love the “truth by belief” approach to law enforcement. Makes the old Soviet Union’s approach appear truly enlightened.

AKMaineIac

How many people denied a purchase because of a background check were prosecuted for that?

Until the majority are. NO NEW LAWS! Not one.

Fire_and_Steel

“How many people denied a purchase because of a background check were prosecuted for that?” In 2010, there were 6,037,394 applications through NICS. In January 2013, Glenn Kessler wrote this in the Washington Post (isn’t that the “progressive” paper in DC?): “In the end, 62 cases were referred for prosecution, but most were declined by prosecutors or dismissed by the court. Out of the original [72,659 FBI] denials, there emerge just 13 guilty pleas.” (The Post didn’t analyze state denials and any resulting false positives or prosecutions.)

Devonshade

Selling murder guns to outside criminals is almost like a sanctioned, lucrative, business model in the lepage regime.

BearClaw207

What is a murder gun? Mine have never murdered anyone, they must be defective.

America’s Mr. Right

What a nonsensical term – “murder gun” – childish.

I’m right, You’re wrong

you should see some of his other posts, “childish” doesnt even begin to describe it

America’s Mr. Right

Be careful, pointing out the flaws in ze’s logic may get you called a racist and reported to the PPH moderators.

tom2

I hate to use hackneyed terms but duhhh. Massachusetts hates guns and has many barriers to buying, possessing and carrying them. It’s a “may issue” state that requires one to acquire a permit from the police to purchase either a long gun or a sidearm. It requires owners to be licensed and limits magazines to ten rounds. It allows the police to add varying degrees of restriction to licenses, e.g., hunting, transporting to specified places, professional duties, etc. And large cities may be prohibited for certain licensees.

Ironically, it claims not to maintain a registry but transfers of firearm ownership are required to be recorded with the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security. And a private seller must verify a buyer’s state issued Firearm Identification Card with the Department of Criminal Justice Information Services. Fact is those who already own firearms of any kind, that are unknown to party bosses, are deeply hunkered down, arms carefully hidden, none for sale and they’re not talking to anyone. Due to advances in forensic science, criminals generally use firearms only once. And they don’t ask the police for new ones. Connect the dots captain obvious.

Roy Gutfinski

As a 35 year retired Probation and Parole Officer here in Maine I can tell you that the truth is that most of these “crime guns from Maine” were stolen by out of state thugs who came to Maine or Maine thugs to trade for out of state drugs. In the heroin trade, a stolen gun is accepted in payment for heroin or other drugs even more readily than cash is accepted. Most law enforcement officers in Maine are aware of this. Want to stop the “crime guns from Maine?” Stop Bloomberg’s New York drug dealers from coming into Maine, Period. Vote NO on Question 3.

BearClaw207

How absolutely correct. But the police chiefs working for liberal town councils or city managers won’t tell you this.

Bill Stuart

This is why laws regulating firearms need to be the same in every state. The federal government needs to outline the laws nationally and assure they are enforced.

Jonny207

Spot-on comment, Bill. I suspect that when this election cycle is over, and the makeup of the SCOTUS is finally filled-out, we will see a new 6-3 (or 7-2, if CJ Roberts evolves) majority form on the Court that would be receptive to the need for uniformity you just outlined. I also suspect that the new Court will revisit both Heller v. DC (2008) and McDonald v. Chicago (2010)(Second Amendment), both of which were decided by one-vote, and will grant Cert for Perulta v. San Diego County (2016) from the Ninth Circuit (Concealed-Carry Licensing). The four votes needed to review these cases are already on the Court, robed and waiting.

As for your enforcement comment, I am a retired LEO and believe in deterrence, when surgically applied. Like you, I am old enough to remember the draconian Rockefeller drug laws on the 1970’s, and the mandatory-minimum (sentencing) laws of the 1980’s US Code. Both did nothing more than sextuple the American Prison population (and making us the highest in the world, by far), and provide long-term job security to the Corrections industry.

As a social scientist, I would like to see the impact of draconian punishments levied for use (or association) of/with Firearms in Violent or Drug-related crimes. Whether that allows Banishment, Sterilization, Amputations, or 100-year Incarcerations would be on the table. My instinct is that re-characterizing existing Firearms violations as ‘strict-liability’ offenses (like Heroin possession) would make them Kryptonite, and depress dramatically their incidence.

areyoukiddingme

Nothing in Heller or Macdonald makes new federal regulations and the corresponding uniformity problematic. You miss the point of both cases. Unless of course you want that uniformity to be you can’t have a gun, in which case I suspect that there will be a civil war. I would be nice if we had any enforcement of the existing law before we start adding to it, but hey that’s just me. The average felon in possession sentence is not even a year.

areyoukiddingme

Really. So you don’t make too many other comments without facts you do know that the Federal government already outlines gun laws nationally right? And every State has to abide by them. OK so maybe you don’t like the current Federal laws? Then maybe you could be specific about what exactly you would like changed? States can add more on top of Federal law but are not required to do so. Every study I’ve seen shows that when they do crime goes up. So let’s not head down that path. The number of guns trafficked is TINY.

Bill Stuart

The states regulate firearms. The federal government defines the right to own them.

areyoukiddingme

Bill, sorry that is completely wrong. There is a vast body of Federal law that affects guns. States can regulate beyond what’s in Federal law but not in conflict to it. If you want to get a brief starter tour take a quick look at Chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, and go from there.

Tony Weld

It is gun transfer not background check.PPH can not tell the truth!

BearClaw207

Mike Sauschuck does not speak for Maine police officers, even those of his own department.

Let’s get this straight: We can’t stop the flow of illegal drugs north with laws, and it is taboo to describe people who bring them to Maine from other states…but we’ll create laws that will somehow stop the (relatively small compared to drugs) flow of guns to other states?

Then, because other states have unConstitutional gun laws, Maine is the problem? If Massachusetts, which has a FAR more serious gun violence problem than Maine does, would stop overregulating citizens, they’d see violence fall and the “iron highway” or whatever they are calling it would stop.

Don’t punish MAINE because other states have issues. It isn’t our fault people in Massachusetts shoot each other (gangs), just like it isn’t all Massachusett’s fault that people in Maine shoot up their drugs.

INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBILITY should not be an uncommon virtue.

Brian Peterson

Lumping “crime guns ” together is a red herring: one used in the commission of a crime is much different than one confiscated by the Mass. police during a routine stop – both are considered “crime guns’?

If one gun was used in a crime, and the other 89 were just confiscated that’s not a “gun pipeline ” problem. As for “Democrats aren’t out to confiscate your guns” tell that to the people of Mass.

Too much smoke here to see the mirrors…..

Tony Weld

Nonsense,why would a felon go get a background check? This will only hurt us honest people.The bad guys will still get there gun.Stop the drugs from Mexico!!!

David Lemoine

So other states create a power vacuum by severely restricting guns, and that when guns from here end up there, it is our fault? That is like making a gravel pit on your property line, then blaming your neighbor when his house falls in it.

yarmouth1

This article is a load of bull. Massachusetts has very strict gun laws, and “confiscating” firearms, even from those stopped for a traffic violation, is relatively easy.

It’s interesting how “common sense gun laws” just become a way to further restrict firearms of law-abiding residents. We know that, and we get it. That’s why we are voting NO on question 3. Wikileaks has told us that Hillary plans to take action on guns by executive action. We have plenty of reason to be concerned.

I’m far more worried about Mass drug dealers bring massive amounts of DRUGS into Maine than I am about Mainers guns being confiscated during a traffic stop in Mass. Where is the concern for that?

Brian Mcdonnell

People will vote on Logic, not emotions on this one. The only people who are pushing a “no” vote are men, and not all men. More women vote than men. This item is DOA whether you like it or not.

HRC-ProvenUnqualified.

“The most recent federal data show that Maine continues to be a top source for guns recovered by police in Massachusetts, a state with among the strictest gun control laws.” … 8-9% equals top source? A third of their “crime guns” originate from their own state.
Information this article does not provide is how many of this “crime guns” are acquired in Maine through private sales? They allude to the real problem of straw purchasers in CT, but don’t make mention of this being the real problem in MA. The proposed law does nothing to curb straw purchases.

America’s Mr. Right

About? Don’t you know the exact number? Guess not.

HRC-ProvenUnqualified.

Why do the Yes on 3 people have to lie about statistics?
According to ATF Firearms Trace Data for the last 10 years, only once has more than 6% of firearms recovered in MA been found to have come from Maine. In 2008, 6.3% of the 1534 recovered firearms came from Maine. The average over the past 10 years is 5%.

I’m right, You’re wrong

the following sentence from the article sums it up best :”To be fair, it is unlikely the background checks proposed under Question 3 would have stopped the Ruger from being passed among people already involved in low-level crimes”

Fire_and_Steel

Well, maybe if the guy who provided Dzhokhar Tsarnaev (age 19 at the time) the gun had insisted they do a background check first . . . Yeah, right, sure.
This is from the Harvard Crimson: “In his testimony, [Stephen] Silva said he lent Tsarnaev, a childhood friend, an illegal gun that Tsarnaev said he would use to rob drug dealers from Rhode Island.” And then there’s this little tidbit: “Silva was arrested in July 2014 on counts of heroin trafficking and possession of a gun with a defaced serial number, and eventually pleaded guilty to his charges. Silva’s arrest was unrelated to the Boston marathon bombings.”
Besides the fact that poor misguided little “Jahar” was too young to even apply for a license to carry a handgun in MA, how many other crimes can we discern from the above quotes? Yep, those fine upstanding young men would surely comply with all state and federal laws regarding the transfer of firearms.
BTW, Mr. Silva served 17 months, partly because his testimony helped squelch Dzhokhar’s defense’s claim that Dzhokhar’s older brother, the late-and-unlamented Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was responsible for the bombing operation and the acquisition of the gun.